Nduom Clears First Hurdle

Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom

The frontrunner in the Convention People’s Party’s presidential nomination, Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom yesterday cleared a major hurdle in his quest to lead the party into the 2008 presidential election.

At an extra-ordinary national executive council meeting of the party held close to midnight yesterday, December 15, 2007,39 out of the total number of 45 member council voted against moves by a section of the party’s leadership to have the candidature of Dr. Nduom nullified.

A presidential aspirant, Lawyer Bright Akwettey has been spearheading the Nduom disqualification move, claiming that the Serious Fraud Office once made incriminating findings against Dr. Nduom.

Akwettey carried out his campaign against Dr. Nduom on many radio stations prior to today’s congress.

Before the open campaign, all other aspirants who seemed to be in a kind of loose alliance against the candidature of Dr. Nduom had been circulating the purported SFO report during the party’s regional congresses.

The Ghanaian Journal sorties at the said meeting discovered that some presidential aspirants and others competing for national executive positions tacitly approve of Akwettey’s campaign.

The majority group at the hurriedly arranged meeting argued that since the issue had been dealt by the parliamentary vetting and appointment committee, there was no need to discuss it, let alone for that discredited document to form the basis for Dr. Nduom’s disqualification from the CPP presidential race.

The said SFO report came up during the vetting of Dr. Nduom for cabinet portfolio in 2001.

After rather lengthy search and investigations into the said SFO report, parliament could not find Dr. Nduom culpable of any wrong doing as the content of the so-called report seems to suggest and subsequently had his ministerial nomination approved.

A lady from the CPP executive council committee lamented at the attempts being made by the Akwettey group to destroy Dr. Nduom and wondered why the issue was being made public “at this critical point when all was set for the CPP congress”.

“I think it is sheer mischief”, she noted, adding “they have realized that they are losing the congress and have therefore resorted to such veiled and wicked campaigns against the people’s choice”, she declared.

With the first hurdle cleared, Dr. Nduom looks set to become the CPP presidential candidate in the 2008 presidential and parliamentary elections.